Descent
by Cyberwolf
Summary: And this is how they fall. [chapter 5, Daring]
1. Darkfall

**  
Darkfall**_  
in vino veritas_

* * *

Tenten wasn't expecting to see Uchiha Sasuke there. 

Strangely enough, she saw him before he saw her, despite his advantage of Sharingan. Then again, she'd been already been sitting in this dim-lit dive of a bar, her eyes long since accustomed to the faint illumination, when _he_ came in, standing all bright and conspicuous in the well-lit entrance while the rest of the bar should have been dark to his daylight-fresh eyes – a deliberate effect designed by the bar's owners, whose patrons liked plenty of warning should unexpected acquaintances turn up. Of course, who knew how effective that was with an _Uchiha…_

She forced herself to look casually back down at the vodka shooter she was nursing – a quick movement of her head would have been noticeable – and tried to suppress her chakra. She was good at that, better than Lee and Neji were, so that Gai usually sent her in when they needed to be low-profile. Still, this was _Uchiha Sasuke_, with his red-spinning eyes that could _see_ chakra if he wanted, and suddenly her Konoha hitai-ate felt very heavy on her brow.

And sure enough, when the guy next to her lumbered away (with a suspiciously blank look in his eyes) Sasuke slipped smoothly onto the vacated barstool, dark – non-Sharingan, yet - eyes glancing at her carelessly. The kunoichi tensed; but he only raised his hand and called for a tankard of ale. Tenten took a swig of her own drink, half for the alcohol and half to show that she _could_, even with one of her village's most infamous missing-nin sitting beside her.

Sasuke didn't speak until his ale had slid down the bar into his hands, and he had taken a healthy draught of the pale liquid. "_What dost thou do here?" _he asked her softly, still staring into his ale.

Tenten jumped a little – not so much at the question but at the fact that he had asked it in Yong, the language of her parents' homeland – and one fairly unknown here in the western nations. "_Where didst THOU learn to speak?" _she demanded instead. "_And how didst ye know that I would?"_

_"I travel in Orochimaru's service," _Sasuke said carelessly, and Tenten noted the lack of honorific – either Japanese or Yong – attached to the name. "_I remembered thee from the exam of Chuunins. When the Chuunin at the doors to the first exam struck thee, a curse fell from thine lips; I realized it was of the tongue, upon a later date when I heard it spoken by another." _Now he glanced at her. "_I have answered thy question; now answer mine."_

There was a silence, before Tenten picked up her shot-glass and finished off her drink._ "A mission," _Tenten said finally. "_It touches not upon thee."_

Sasuke actually looked a little surprised at that, eyes widening a fraction before narrowing again in suspicion. _"Ye will not fight me? There shall be no attempt to force me back to the Village, a return triumphant?"_

Tenten shrugged, signalled to the bartender for another shooter, and spoke without looking Sasuke in the eye. "_If there is a wish in thee to cross blades, I will oblige thee. Thou art the stronger," _she said flatly, the assessment as hard and clear-edged as one of her swords, "_but I will not be an easy victory. It is not inconceivable that I should win. In either outcome, I will, most likely, be grievously injured, and unable to complete my assigned mission. This does not appeal to me." _

Sasuke was still looking at her, eyes a little less suspicious and a little amused at her declaration of possible victory. Then he looked again, at the long lean form and the callused hands, at the saw-edged dagger he could see just peeking out of a wrist-mounted sheath, and he wondered. "_And so, ye prize your mission more than this chance to garner glory in the eyes of Konoha?" _

"_YE are not MY mission," _Tenten replied coldly, catching her new shot-glass as it slid towards her. "_And I will, in all probability, NOT __be able to bring you back to Konoha. I should prefer to add a notation for an '_A-class completed_' rather than an '_Engaged but could not subdue' _to my records."_

_"They desire me still," _Sasuke said, goading her. It was stupid, but – maybe it was the ale – he wanted to see what he could make this atypical Konoha kunoichi say. "_Konoha ANBU daily scour the lands for any notice of me. My team-mates agitate for the chance to search me out. They would welcome any news ye could take them of me – they would appreciate any…efforts made on their behalf."_

_"That is not my concern," _Tenten said dismissively. "_Their appreciation would be of little merit when I apply for ANBU - unlike an impressive missions-record. If my mission was to hunt you, then I would use any information I had on you for that purpose. As it stands, however…" _She shrugged and took a sip of her shooter.

Sasuke stared at her, measuring her once again. This was not someone in Sakura's mold, or Naruto's, someone who felt and lived with fire and passion. This was someone who saw reality more than dreams; someone who thought of themselves as individuals, rather than as parts of a greater whole, and who contemplated their survival in those terms. This was someone who would withhold information for their own possible future use, calculating before giving.

This was someone he could understand.

"_I see,"_ he said, finally, sipping at his ale. _"So shall we agree – I will not harm thee, and ye will not hunt me?"_ he nonchalantly proposed. "_I do not care for the inconvenience of having to defeat a Konoha kunoichi."_

Tenten visibly bristled, but calmed herself after a few deep breaths. "_Done and done, by the Eight Immortals," _she said, invoking a formal vow structure in Yong. She turned to face him for the first time, offering her hand.

Sasuke clasped it in his, echoing her words – he had learned enough about the Yong to recognize vows – to seal the agreement. They stared at each other over their clasped hands, understanding that something deep and secret and potentially very dangerous – if either of their villages discovered it – now existed between them.

Then Tenten took her hand back, and said indifferently, _Thy accent is very good. There is in it the exact tone of a sheep-herder from the mud huts of the south." _

As much to his surprise as to hers, Sasuke barked a short laugh at the offhand insult. _"My thanks to thee, o noble lady. And this lowly sheep-herder might venture to assume that the Heaven-born," - _raising his eyebrows over the pun on her name - "_has learnt her speech from the pure-spoken words of the Imperial Court?"_

Tenten, who knew very well that she spoke – as she had been taught – with the slight burr of the northern mountains, raised her shot-glass to him in a slight toast, acknowledging the hit.

They spoke lightly over a few more drinks, surprising each other and themselves by their ability to hold an interesting conversation. When the windows of the bar showed it was no longer afternoon, but full dark of the night – the time when shinobi best liked to travel – they parted with actual regret.

Sasuke left first, by previous agreement, laying a coin down to cover his tab. Before he left, he paused, bent low, and whispered into her ear, "_Orochimaru has sent teams to the valleys west and north of here, knowing that those lie through Konoha's trade-routes. They have orders to engage any shinobi they see."_ Then he left.

Tenten finished her drink thoughtfully, laid down her own payment, then departed for the east.

* * *

TBC 

This was my first attempt at writing a darker sort of Tenten - reasoning that, after all, ambition is the clearest thing we know about her. I'm still trying to get a handle on a new style and all that, so please comment and tell me what you think was off or cool or whatever with this, or any suggestions - I still haven't got the latter half of this written.

Edit: Changed a few lines here and there. Thanks to tao-empress for the feedback!


	2. Deceiver

* * *

**Deceiver**_  
alea iacta est_

* * *

Tenten saw him – or thought she did – three weeks later. This time she was not out alone, Ino and Kiba forming the rest of the three-man team. They had been sent on a fairly simple patrol mission for a particularly dangerous area of Fire Country's borders – the area near Sound. Kiba was there as a heavy-combat specialist and a tracker; Ino for her expertise in interrogation in case they found a captive. Tenten, who was not as good as either of them in their specialties _but_ was proficient in all of them – combat both melee and long-range, interrogation, tracking, as well as in dead-reckoning navigation, seal-casting, tactics and strategy, which neither of the others was really trained for – was in command. 

They had bedded down for the night. Ino was foraging for food; Kiba was building a fire. Tenten went off to a small spring-fed pond to get water for the pot and for drink. After she filled the water containers, she took the chance to wash a little. She knelt and splashed her face with the pond-water, shivering a little at the coldness. As she gazed idly down at her reflection in the rippling water, she thought she spied a flash of dark color – darker than the surrounding, sunset-lit forest – go by. Frowning, she stared with more concentration into the stilling water.

There! Was that…was that a shape in the trees? She peered closer, not turning her head to alert whatever it was. The shape began to resolve into human lines, something recognizable…

"Tenten!" Tenten cursed silently as Kiba's voice ripped through the forest silence. "I mean, um, captain! Where are yoo-oou?"

Someone flitted away from the small clearing – she could hear the rustle of the leaves, like a slight breeze passing through. Tenten frowned in thought.

Then she lifted her voice and began to sing.

Kiba burst into the clearing to see his commanding officer kneeling beside a pond, scooping water into one of the containers (she had emptied it out) as she sang a strange, unfamiliar melody.

Her song faded away as she rose to her feet, swinging the water containers over her shoulder. "Here, Inuzuka," she said, tossing one at him. "Make yourself useful."

"O-okay, captain," Kiba said, obediently shouldering his new burden. As the two of them made their way back to the campsite, Kiba mustered up enough courage to ask his normally pragmatic companion – Konoha's resident Ice Queen - about her strangely uncharacteristic singing. "Ano, captain? What was that song you were singing earlier?"

"Oh," Tenten said carelessly. "Nothing much. It's just an old kids' song."

"I…I didn't recognize the words."

"You wouldn't. It's not in Japanese."

"Oh…"

Tenten glanced at him, then softened enough to elaborate: "It's in Yong, the language of the eastern empire. My parents came from there."

"Oh," Kiba said again, this time in a more understanding tone.

Tenten tried not to laugh to herself. Yes, it was in Yong; and yes, the melody was from an old children's song, one they sang to keep the beat in their simple games. And yes, the lyrics did change from region to region.

But the lyrics had never before consisted of detailed coordinates of exactly where a Konoha patrol would be going during their mission, hastily transposed into Yong military parlance. "_Horse fifty-seven to Rooster thirty-three, north, sweep-pattern standard, checkpoints Five, Nine and Tweeee-eelve," _did not really appeal to playful children, after all.

Tenten smiled secretly, a hidden curve of her lips. It felt good to return a favor.

* * *

In the trees, a dark figure chuckled to himself. Luckily he knew how to decipher Yong coordinates - they used the avatars of their Zodiac for classification instead of an alphabet, for example. How useful his time in the East was proving. 

Inscribing the precise coordinates to his eidetic memory, he leaped off into the night, red eyes flaring against the darkness.

* * *

TBC. 

Next chapter:**_ Deeper_**.  
_Tenten and Sasuke entangle themselves further._


	3. Deeper

* * *

**Deeper**  
_abyssus abyssum invocat_

_

* * *

_

Their little truce-deception grew deeper and more entangling as the days sped by. Tenten had several times discovered packages of kunai on her doorstoop – nothing unusual for her, weapons-master that she was, she who supplied a significant portion of the local blacksmith's income. However, these were _not_ from the local blacksmith, though someone had gone to a little trouble so that the packages looked that they were.

She liked receiving these packages. The kunai inside were of excellent quality - sharp-edged, strong and well-balanced - their handles already wrapped in linen for that gripping quality she liked. The steel had that dark-blue sheen that meant it had been very well-tempered, with the strong scent of new-forged metal.

And some of these beautiful kunai were hollowed, and inside those hollows were thin slips of paper, with short messages inscribed in a terse, neat hand.

Tenten never revealed these messages to Konoha. They were, in any case, small matters: where a team of Sound jounin would be, who was hiring some chuunin and why, the abilities of the ninja she could expect to run into in her missions. Nothing to topple Sound; nothing that Konoha's survival hinged on, really. And how would she explain where these came from?

Small matters, yes; but useful. Very useful. With that information at hand, Tenten began racking up a very impressive record of completed missions. She was developing a reputation for incredible luck, never running into Sound-nin – who could always be counted upon to harass, if not kill, Konoha-nin – or spying them out before they saw her, and being able to ambush or avoid them. Soon Sound Village was beginning to list her on a list of Konoha-nin with whom an encounter should be carefully considered for survivability.

And there were those said it wasn't _luck_, it was a well-developed set of senses and instincts, a skill at reading the situation, an undeniable flair for trap-setting and ambuscades - it was the quality of a great kunoichi...

Either way, her name was always near the top of the list when a mission profile was being constructed.

And if, on those missions, she sometimes dropped kunai, lovely blue-steel kunai, no one noticed. A weapons-mistress could be assumed to use up weaponry at a fast rate.

And no one minded when the hotshot new ANBU with the incredible mission success-rate was always hanging around ANBU headquarters, and no one on the periodic 'Search for the Uchiha' missions ever bothered to guard their tongues around her.

And when sightings of the Uchiha began to drop in frequency – when it began to seem as if he _knew_ where the teams would be, appearing just a little out of their search radius like a taunt – that only meant the kid was becoming better at dodging them, or was sticking closer to Orochimaru's base, or he had developed a new invisibility jutsu.

It did not mean – it could never have meant – that someone was helping him.

* * *

"_This be unwise," _Tenten said to the air, gazing pointedly at nothing. 

"_Truth or not, this be, at the least, safe," _a smooth, dark voice replied from out of the shadows. _"Thy companions know nothing; and thou hast, like a wolf among the milgha deer, run them until they sleep as do the dead. They shalt not wake."_

"_This wast done __not __ for THY sake, mind. I...was of a mind to simply enjoy a night's silence."_

_"Of a certainty, o lady from the north."_

_"As long as ye remember, o sheepherder."_

Though Tenten was looking at the stars, and carefully not scanning the area for the voice, she knew they were smirking at each other.

* * *

**TBC**

* * *

**Next chapter**: Sasuke is nervous. Tenten is irritable. _Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus._


	4. Dragons

* * *

**Dragons**  
_draco dormiens nunquam titillandus_

* * *

Tenten snapped awake with that instant alertness trained into shinobi in general and ANBU in particular, launching herself into a two-legged sweep-kick with her palms as a pivot. A muffled thud next to her, as well as impact-pains against her legs, proved the maneuver had been successful; quickly she rolled to her knees, continuing the motion as she swung herself over the prone figure next to her bedroll, straddling it down, twin daggers crossed at the throat. 

"_Greetings, o my lady." _

Tenten froze. Her eyes, adjusting to the predawn darkness, focused on the face smirking amusedly up at her. "_Sasuke?_" she whispered incredulously, pronouncing his name with a Yong accent as she slipped into childhood speech-patterns.

She considered nicking his throat with the daggers, just to get that annoying smirk off his face. Reluctantly she dismissed the idea. The young ANBU rolled off her unexpected guest, coming to her feet in a single smooth motion, not looking at him as he duplicated the feat. Instead she scanned the campsite anxiously, checking if any of her team-mates had come awake.

"_They sleep. Do not fret thyself," _Sasuke whispered in her ear. Tenten turned her head to glare at him.

"_Yes, they sleep. As should I! It is not yet dawn. For what reason hast thou disturbed my slumber?"_

Sasuke only smiled at her, that half-arc of unbelievable smugness that made her a little angry inside every time she saw it, and flitted out of the clearing. Tenten cursed under her breath, took one last glance around the camp-site, then followed him.

* * *

He stopped in a little clearing, out of earshot from the camp-site, and waited for her with calm dark eyes. Her own were angry, blazing, flame-shot in the shadows as she landed next to him. His appearance at her camp-site was a surprise, a _risk_. She was out on an A-Class mission with a full ANBU team, and her captain was one of the best in the squads. _What_ did he think he was doing? 

When she asked him this question, his reply was simple.

"Happy birthday_."_

Tenten froze. Was it…_was_ it her birthday? She flushed as Sasuke gave a brief, low laugh.

"_Thou hast not forgotten, surely?" _

"_N- no! That is not...I was merely -_ _engrossed with duties_..._" _Tenten protested. She blinked as she noticed that Sasuke was holding a small scroll, wrapped with dark-green ribbon, to her.

She stared at it blankly, and Sasuke sighed. "_It is meant for thee,"_ he explained.

Tenten looked at him uncomprehendingly.

Sasuke wondered why the one time he'd decided to give a present – the first time in years he'd done so - it had to be clarified.

"_This is intended for thee. A - a..." _He struggled for the translation, gave up, reverted to Nippon. "…birthday present_."_

"_Oh_!" She actually put her hand to her mouth in her surprise, and Sasuke was torn between laughing or gaping at her uncharacteristic behavior.

He settled for extending the scroll to her, and this time she took it, with hands that – Sasuke noted – trembled slightly. She delicately undid the ribbon, letting its silken length run through her fingers before tucking it carefully away. Then she turned her attention to the scroll itself, regarding the rolled-up papyrus – it was an _old_ scroll – warily. With cautious, weapons-trained fingers she unrolled it, letting her eyes trail over the ancient, stylized characters. They widened in astonishment as she recognized the scroll for what it was.

"It's a scroll for summoning," Sasuke confirmed, his voice slightly nervous, slipping fully back into his birth-language. "Orochimaru gave me a contract with the snakes, and one of them told me about this, this contract with their cousins. They're a small sub-branch, they don't have a boss of their own, but I thought you might…"

"_I thank thee,"_ Tenten whispered, still staring at the scroll. A summons – only the best of the Konoha shinobi were allowed at the village contracts. She hadn't thought…

And furthermore, over and behind the pleasure of the gift, was the pleasing notion that whispered at the back of her mind – he thought her worthy of a summons. He did not doubt that she _could_ summon. She looked up at him, a wide smile transfiguring her face. "Thank you," she said again, this time answering him in his language, her eyes bright.

Sasuke smiled back at her – a full smile, this one, curving to his eyes. "You're welcome."

Tenten quickly looked back down at the scroll. "This scroll…who does it summon?" she asked, her voice a little high.

"The snakes' cousins. They are, as I mentioned, a small sub-branch - more a cross between two major families. They're not as famous as their larger cousins, but _I_ think they're underestimated," Sasuke said, smirking at her. He slipped back into Yong, finding the more formal cadences of the older language better suited.

"_To thee, I entrust the contract of the wyverns." _

Tenten's eyes lit up. "_Dragons." _

_"Dragons," _Sasuke agreed, watching as her hand caressed the dragon's-mask hanging on her belt.

* * *

**AN**

Thanks to **taoempress** for her humoring my OCD rants about the Yong language and helping me develop a better idea of how to write it. This chapter makes me slightly nervous because I fear I am writing them OOC, but it's about time they warmed up to each other, right? And thanks to all my new reviewers for their enthusiasm. Kudos to you, celira! You got it right first time off.

BTW, would you guys want me to post the translations for the little subtitles?

**Wyverns**, according to good old Wikipedia for the source, are winged, limbed serpent-like creatures, cousins to dragons, feline in temperament. Because I am leery of sueifying Tenten – like JKR did with Ginny, for example – I'm trying to keep the summons not so powerful. They're small, have no huge boss-summon like Toad, Slug and Snake, and not all that powerful. I picture her using them more for messengers and scouts than for battle.

_(curses the formatting demons) _Anyone have a good idea on how I could mark the different languages aside from italicizing?


	5. Daring

* * *

**Daring**_  
qui audet vincit_

* * *

_**blah : **_speech in Yong

* * *

Sasuke's life with Orochimaru was a dark, grim thing, where concepts like 'safety' and 'trust' were ethereal as the thought of glittery-winged fairie unicorns. As could be expected, his sources of happy feelings were thus far and few between, and even rarer were things that could cause his expression to change from 'sulky' or 'glaring' to 'neutral' or perhaps even 'smirky'. 

This was why he was a little uncertain on how to react when, grinning so widely that her teeth were a visible streak of white in the darkness, Tenten suddenly dropped out of the branches above him. On the one hand, the primary reason for this little nighttime jaunt – to see Tenten, whose now-customary ANBU team (Sound intelligence had them pegged as one of the most effective Konoha units, so effective that the powers-that-be weren't willing to split them up) was supposed to be passing by this sector – had been accomplished. On the other, she had removed – indeed, appropriated for herself – the gleeful opportunity of surprising her, one of the few pleasures left in his life.

It wasn't like she was being very gracious about it, either.

"Made you jump!" she crowed.

"Did not," Sasuke retorted, sulkily. To express his feelings he dove down through the foliage to the forest-floor, snagging a tree-branch and performing several quick rotations to kill his momentum before landing. However, as Tenten – still grinning, he noted sourly – duplicated his feat and landed with an entirely unnecessary handspring, it did not make him feel any better.

"Did so," she said, in a deliberately childish voice, then asked, "Well, aren't you going to ask me how I found you?"

Sasuke had been wondering exactly that, but he'd be damned if he'd ask her. He stuck his hands in his pockets and kept obstinately silent, turning pointedly away from her.

Regardless, Tenten leapt in front of him and captured his eyes with her own, sticking her tongue out in a little 'you _can't_ ignore me, nyah nyah' gesture before saying, "I _guessed_ you'd be paying a visit. It was a hard mission outland, B-Class that _should_ have been A-Class but of course _they _– " the tone of disgust could only be for the inactive ninja in charge of handling missions; the enmity between them and active field ninja was legendary and traditional - "messed up the threat-rating of the missing-nin."

Sasuke's mind flashed back to a grizzled bridge-builder trying – and succeeding – to play on Konoha's good graces.

"And a good night's sleep would have been nice. _Therefore_ I assumed you'd be coming to interrupt it."

Sasuke felt his lips twitching into a smirk; sternly he commanded himself to keep his expression flat. From the delighted look in Tenten's eyes, he rather thought he was failing.

"So I took pre-emptive measures," Tenten continued, "and had Kunai-chan look for you."

'Kunai-chan?' Sasuke mouthed to himself, then repeated it aloud. "_Kunai-chan?_ Who – or what – is Kunai-chan?" Feeling clever, he slipped into Yong for the more formal cadences. "**_Surely it were not a weapon? Dost thou not name thy blades for thy future sons? _**"

Tenten, who did not, in fact, name her kunai – she did have secret names for her favorite melee weapons, but throwing weapons were made to be, well, thrown away, and thus it didn't do to be too attached – answered, "**_Is 'Kunai' not a fitting name for a warrior's son? I find it so._**_" _While Sasuke digested that, she continued, "And Kunai-chan is a wyvern. One of the first that I summoned. I trained him to be able to recognize your scent, and set him to scout for you tonight. He found you, he returned to me, and then...I found you," she finished, looking very pleased with herself.

Several questions whirred in Sasuke's head, among them being 'how did she train a wyvern', 'how did she train a wyvern to recognize _my scent'_, 'does she really want to name her son Kunai', and 'did she like my present' but what came out of his mouth was this: "You're naming the wyverns after weapons?"

_**"Whyever not**_?" Tenten shrugged. "They're certainly as dangerous as weapons, aren't you Kunai-chan," she cooed to a small green wyvern – Sasuke now noticed – hovering at her shoulder. It chirruped its agreement, rubbing its head against her cheek. "_**And the names of such as these be not meant for the tongues of humans**_."

She caressed the top of the wyvern's head with her fingertips, smiling as the squirrel-sized animal pushed its head against her fingers, purring. With a last farewell pat she dismissed it, withdrawing the chakra needed to keep it in summon. The green wyvern disappeared in a puff of smoke.

She turned back to Sasuke, her eyes still bright and happy – expectant, Sasuke realized, not needing his Sharingan to read Tenten's expression.

"_**I hold something to gift thee with**_," Tenten sing-songed. Muscles unaccustomed to the expression twinged as her smile widened.

"Oh?" Sasuke said, one eyebrow rising.

"I do. _**Dost ****thou desire knowledge of what it is I hold**_?" Tenten asked, her tone and expression clearly inviting him to ask.

Sasuke rolled his eyes lightly, unable to keep a half-quirk from his lips as he obediently parroted, "_**What is it that thou holds, o my lady?**_" The half-mocking expression quickly dropped from his face as he saw what she held out to him.

An Uchiha deep-training scroll, the wax seal proudly bearing the Uchiha clan emblem.

"Where did you get that!"

Tenten grinned, pleased with herself and with Sasuke's awed reaction. "_**Where does one procure the secrets of the Uchiha save for the Uchiha compound?**_" she asked, lightly.

Sasuke looked at her. "_You_ got into _the Uchiha compound?"_

"Pfft. _**It were easy**_," Tenten said tauntingly, then winced as her shoulder throbbed in pain. Involuntarily her hand came up to rub it, and she froze under Sasuke's contemplative glance.

"Alright, alright," she admitted. "It was as difficult as t**_he hundred trials of the Monkey King._**" Most shinobi clans were paranoid anyway, but having to deal with criminals and assorted other breaking-in-and-stealing types for a living made the Uchiha even more…security-conscious than most. Their walled and isolated – almost out of Konoha limits – compound was laced with more traps and seals than any other two clans combined. Even now, four years after the last of the Uchiha had left it with all its defenses activated, to survive the outer ring of defenses was something the riskier of the ANBU dared each other to do – and it was a challenge only ever accepted with the help of copious amounts of alcohol. To win through to the inner ring, much less to actually get to the dwellings and temple and so on, was not a thought to be entertained.

Except for someone who had a reason to get in.

Tenten, with a _very_ attentive Sasuke as a captive audience, spent a good chunk of the night explaining – interspersed with Sasuke's eager questioning – how she had managed to infiltrate – the word was _entirely_ appropriate – his clan's compound. She gave him full credit for the stories of his childhood wherein he had revealed this or that about the compound, giving her reference points to build off.

(Sasuke felt a little…odd about how closely she had appeared to listen to him. It was…a _nice_ kind of odd.)

Then she moaned about the weeks of research that had gone into the endeavor – scrolls on seals, and traps, and undoing said seals and traps safely or at least avoiding them; books on traditional Konoha architecture, and the properties of cement and paving-stone and roof-tile and wood and bamboo used in it; secretly pulling up blueprints of the Uchiha compound, because while her interest in traps and seals could be explained by her job, and the books by a new-found profession of love for architecture, it would be hard to explain_ that._ Luckily an ANBU lieutenant had a conveniently high access-level clearance.

Sasuke, who knew very well that Tenten dove into research the same way alcoholics did into bars, half-smirked as he imagined the girl plowing through sheaves of reading material.

She had then explained how she had used some of the smaller wyverns, like Kunai-chan and Sai-chan and Nyf-chan (a foreign word for 'knife' she explained to Sasuke) to scout out the interior. By the time she had done, she had more information available to her than most shinobi had on A-rank mission briefings.

She was more reticent, though, when it came to speaking of the actual infiltration. She tried to brush over it in words like barest lines of a picture, dropping place-names as markers – from northern wall to central street near the main gates to the three-peaked roof of the Elders' Hall to the white temple – without mention of the paths she must have made between them.

However, it was easy for Sasuke – his memory jump-started by her earlier ramblings about blueprints and architecture – to fill in the blanks. The pit of sharpened stakes. The tiger-traps. The line of seals that burned the unauthorized. The seal to increase gravity enough to crush. The razor-wire. The hidden blades.

Later that night, as she slept the deep, exhausted slumber she had been sure Sasuke would interrupt (he would have, too) Sasuke paused before examining the scroll to look at her. She had been favoring her right leg a little, and breathing too controlledly – like someone careful not to place undue pressure on healing ribs. There were faint bruises on her skin, and – as she shifted her ANBU-issue top had ridden up (he had only pulled it up a little bit more) – he could see her entire torso swathed in bandages.

He leaned back against a tree-trunk and considered, hefting the scroll thoughtfully in one hand as he did so.

* * *

**AN**

The way Tenten shifts from Yong to Nippon is kind of based on how I mix my English and Tagalog. Of course the parallels aren't exact, but you takes what you gots, right:P

Edit1: changed the thing about the mission. Because ANBU don't take mission from clients, do they? They're more for Konoha special business.

Thanks mucho to my reviewers, especially **Celira **(And yesssss, another Luke/Mara fan! I would glomp you if I could) **Shikyo Yaiba, Matahari**, **Amatyultare256, starlight15** and ** Wielder of paperclips**. (If this series has a scene in Konoha, you can be sure Shikamaru is going to be in it. XD )

_qui audet vincit: _who dares, wins. Motto of the British SAS.


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